


Like This

by amaradangeli



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s01e05 The Broca Divide, F/M, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 05:10:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13896954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaradangeli/pseuds/amaradangeli
Summary: "What did you mean not like this?"





	Like This

**Author's Note:**

> I'd intended to let this go through the beta process. But I woke up pre-five-a.m. and I'm pretty much in "what the hell" mode right now. Plus, I've got the time. So... yeah.

They were alone in the gear up room, Teal'c was already done, and Daniel hadn’t show up yet. She faced her open locker, her voice nearly getting lost inside and said, "I remember."

He didn't know what to say for a long time, but he knew what she was talking about. He finally decided on, simply, "I remember, too." He wondered where that left them now. Would they have to _deal with it?_

She nodded as she did up her tac vest. "What now?"

He put his vest on too, clipped together before he answered. "Is _nothing_ an option?"

"Sure," she said quickly, in a way that told him she might be willing to keep from talking about it, but she absolutely wasn't forgetting it.

Which was fine. He didn't think he'd forget it either. The way she'd roughly pulled him to her, hands on his head, tongue in his mouth. Her soft body pressing against him, then her weight on top of him, and then the brief but sweet relief he found in the cradle of her thighs.

"But..." She clearly thought better of asking because she shook her head.

"But what?" Glutton for punishment that he was, he had to know.

Still looking into her locker, she asked, "What did you mean _not like this?"_

Yeah. He was afraid that was going to come up. He hadn't known her long. Just a month. But he'd put in some serious time thinking about the ways he might unspool her, coaxing Captain-Doctor Samantha Carter through the loss of her tight grip on reality. But he sure as hell wasn't going to admit to her that she'd been the fantasy of choice since he'd met her and, therefore, he had more than a passing acquaintance with _like this_.

"It didn't mean anything." He opted for a flat-out lie and hoped for the best.

He thought maybe he'd gotten away with it.

Then she said, "I've thought about it."

He nearly choked on his own saliva. "Thought about what?"

"Kissing you. I think that's why I did it when I had the virus."

He chose not to fixate on the fact that she'd thought about kissing him. "Fraiser said you chose me because you thought I'd give you the strongest offspring."

She finally peeked over at him. "That's what she told me too. I think she wanted me to feel better."

"Did it help?"

"No." She punctuated the word by closing her locker.

He swung himself around, straddled the bench and then sat indicating, after she glanced his way, that she should do the same. She took a deep breath but did sit down, facing the lockers rather than him, but he was going to count it as a win.

“Is this going to be a problem?”

The one cheek he could see flushed scarlet and she worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “I think I should be asking you that. After all, I came on to you.”

His first reaction was to laugh – though he didn’t – because what man in his right mind wouldn’t be flattered that someone who was a catch, so much younger and so very attractive, had made a pass at him? Granted, if it had been the other way around and he’d laid one on her like she had on him he’d be up against the bricks with a litany of sexual harassment charges. So, really, was it okay, just because the instigator was an attractive woman?

He decided on honesty. “Under the circumstances, I think it can be overlooked. But it’s probably not the best approach to get in the habit of.”

She smiled, just slightly. “No, sir.” She did peek at him when she asked, “Does it make you uncomfortable to know that I’m attracted to you?

That time he really did have to laugh. “No, Carter. It doesn’t.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “It didn’t even make me uncomfortable when you kissed me. It was out of character, so I was a little concerned. And it didn’t feel _great_ to be slammed into the bench,” he smiled when she winced a little.

“Look, it would suit me to never talk about this again. How about you?”

“Definitely.”

“Okay, then.”

And really, that should have been the end of it.

But more than seven years later, when he was a general and she was a lieutenant colonel, things between them had never been more strained. He knew it was because she was dating the loser cop. After weeks of it, months, really, everything one does grated on the nerves of the other.

They were arguing one day – no, that was too charitable – they were _fighting_ one day, and he wasn’t sure why but she spit words at him with the force of a pneumatic nail gun: Well, I guess we’ll never know what you meant by _not like this_ , now, will we?

It took him less than a second to be propelled back to that first month when she’d chosen him and he’d rebuffed her using every last ounce of strength he had. But he’d slipped up and said a thing he never should have said – a thing he never _would_ have said if he hadn’t been taken by such surprise.

She’d dwelt on it. For all the intervening years, she’d stewed in the mire of what he meant when he’d said _not like this_. Part of him wanted to stride across his office, windows be damned, take her into his arms and show her exactly what he wanted a kiss between them to be like.

She wanted it too. It was what she was goading him for. But no. Because, “not like this, either, Carter.”

He thought she’d looked murderous _before_. But the look on her face after he made it clear that he wasn’t kissing her _again_ made the first one seem almost happy by comparison. He _had_ a good memory of a kiss between them, though, and she didn’t. He’d always felt guilty about that but never more so than in the current moment.

But good kisses weren’t always _right_ kisses. And the truth was, he’d always wanted to kiss her when it _mattered_ , when the stakes were high, and they were dying. Or, hell, when they were fighting. But not when she was with another man. Because Jack would take her, but he’d never take something that belong to someone else. And heaven help him if she ever caught wind of him believing she belonged to anyone let alone the pipsqueak cop he was pretty sure she was unhappy with anyway.

So no, he wasn’t going to kiss her in that moment. Not under the circumstances and not like that.

Sometime, in the intervening months before he _did_ kiss her, she agreed to marry the punk-ass cop.

When her father lay in the infirmary, dying, Jack and Sam shared a moment that bonded them together in a way that transcended any other man. And then, a few days after Jacob died, when Sam wasn’t sporting an engagement ring anymore, and when they were standing in her living room after the rest of those who came to pay their respects at the wake had left, she finally cried – real, fat tears of grief he couldn’t contain and understood completely.

She turned into his embrace. Sometime later, once she wasn’t soggy and snotty and was able to breathe again, they stood in her back-yard staring at the stars, trying to figure out which might be Tok’ra planet suns. And she leaned against him.

She looked up at him. “I guess not like this, either?”

There were thousands of moments coming that would have been better, that would have made a sweeter story than pressing his mouth to that of a grieving woman. And it wasn’t what he’d imagined all those years, or even those months before. But he found he’d been wrong the whole time. A kiss out of desperation or anger would have felt really good. But it wouldn’t have felt right. He’d had it backwards all along.

“This is perfect.”

As it was, she kissed him instead of the other way around, but that seemed right under the circumstances.

When it was over he felt like he knew her better. He knew the sweet, sweet taste of her mouth, the slight tang and salt of her tears, the feeling of her soft skin under his palm, and the way her body gave against his. It was everything he’d always wanted but hadn’t quite known how to articulate. And it was everything he hadn’t allowed himself to truly want, too.

“It was worth waiting for.”

“Yes, it was.”


End file.
